Day August 31, 2010

In 1970 University of Kansas professor James Gunn interviewed a series of science fiction authors for his Centron film series “Science Fiction in Literature”. This footage from an unreleased film in that series featuring an interview with Rod Serling, which wasn’t finished due to problems with obtaining rights to show footage from Serling’s work in television. This reconstruction is based on the original workprint footage that was saved on two separate analog sources since the audio track was separate. Re-syncing the footage was a long involved process as the audio track didn’t match the film and there was substantial sync drift. While not perfect, there’s a lot of interesting information on writing for television in the dialogue with Serling as well as a prophetic statement about his health at the beginning.

It’s also been read by Jay Leno on his late night TV show, on National Public Radio more than once (including Car Talk), on craigslist.org (sans the P.O. box), it’s been printed on T-shirts, discussed on the liberal website democraticunderground.org, it’s been the subject of conversation in several online forums, and very similar wording has been used in some computer games. There’s even a ghost hunter, Richard Senate, a resident of Oakview, who’s looking for the author. On his website he says the ad appeared in a local paper in 2004. He states “Some have even walked the town of Oak View seeking…evidence of the traveler…” It keeps popping up.

Where did it come from? Who is the mysterious author? What was his intent?

Actually, it first appeared on page 92 of the Sept/Oct 1997 issue of BHM—and I wrote it.

The family of the Dover High School student shocked in his electrical trades class last school year has filed a lawsuit alleging negligence on the parts of the teacher, school district and City of Dover.

Documents filed in Strafford County Superior Court on Friday indicate Robert and Sandra DuBois, parents of 18-year-old Kyle DuBois, are seeking compensation for medical expenses, lost income due to time away from work and other damages related to their son being shocked in his electrical trades class on March 11. The lawsuit claims DuBois critically injured himself because of his teacher Thomas Kelley’s failure to properly warn of the dangers of electrical currents.

DuBois was hospitalized after receiving a serious electrical shock while in class on March 11. On a dare, DuBois clipped alligator clips to his nipples and received a severe shock that caused him to stagger and collapse, the lawsuit says.

Back in March I gave up fast food, chain restaurants and soda. Soda was the tough one for me. I don’t drink beer so when I would go out to eat I would have soda. Now I just have water. As a result of my fast food and soda embargo, I immediately started losing weight and lost 4 inches on my waist. I don’t know how many lbs I dropped because my scale was broken (not from stepping on it…. How dare you!)

There’s few more obvious ways to track the growth of a city than by charting the transformation of its skyline. Perhaps this is especially the case with a city like Toronto, where developments have seemed to come in major stages, whether this be the rise of the Royal York Hotel in the late 1920s, the Toronto Dominion Centre in the late 60s or, of course, the addition of the CN Tower in the mid-70s. And even if such documentation fails to tell an in-depth story about the nature of the city, it remains intriguing to examine the process by which Toronto grew up on a macro level.

The photos below speak mostly for themselves in this capacity, but a few provisos are worthy of mention. In a perfect world, an exercise like this one would compare depictions of the skyline from the same vantage point so as to give the most accurate representation of its growth. Unfortunately, however, this is not strictly the case with the images below. While an attempt has been made to be consistent, there is quite a bit of variance from one angle to another.